At present many different forms of computer program are available for carrying out booking, reservation and resource allocation functions. Such computer programs have hitherto relied upon numerical computations in order to test whether a particular resource is free and thus able to be allocated. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,632,032 and 5,826,082 are indicative of resource allocation techniques which rely upon numerical computations.
By way of contrast, symbolic computations, being at a higher level of abstraction than arithmetic or numerical computations, are naturally more general and versatile in that they can deal with a whole class of problems rather than just specific instances of that class. The advantages are similar to the advantages algebra enjoys in mathematics over arithmetic. The cost is the intellectual effort required in devising rich and compact symbolic systems, which will carry needed information in an easily (or readily) useable manner, and a list of meaningful operations on the symbols. The use of symbolic computations allows general purpose resource allocation systems to be coded into software much more easily and compactly than numerical methods. It therefore offers advantages of quicker and compact coding, less debugging, faster implementation, and mathematical verification.